Chapter 31
Jay’s dad lived in a yellow bungalow: windblown garden out front, pots on the porch steps, a cracked fountain that had stopped spurting water years ago, sticking up from the ground like a sinking ship.
He was staring off into the distance, smoking, when Jay and I pulled in the driveway for Christmas dinner.
He’d always reminded me of a dentist with his elegant silver coils, his rimless glasses that seemed from a different decade.
“Look at Jet’s Beauties of the Week.” He hugged us on the porch before turning away to cough.
Nodding at his blunt, Jay said, “Be careful.”
He waved him away. “I’m fine. It’s my knee, that’s the problem.”
“When’s your surgery?” I asked.
“What surgery?”
I looked at Jay.
“Dad, your knee surgery.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I just need to rest.”
Jay pressed his lips together. “How is rest going to help something that needs to be removed?”
His dad ignored this. “Hope you all are hungry. It’s just us.”
We followed him inside, into the kitchen, the counter lined with aluminum foil pans propped over blue flames. Jay passed me a paper plate. “Aunt Renee and Uncle P aren’t coming?”
“They’re in Jamaica.”
“What about Ricky and them?”
“They’re”—he waved a hand in the air—“being messy.”
We ate in the living room. Kaitlan Collins was on TV talking about civil servants bracing for the new administration.
And then: Gazans drowning trying to get aid.
A hundred women and children, killed. My stomach turned itself inside out.
Mr. Wright shook his head. That refrain that failed in so many ways.
Not Palestinians, but women and children.
Look: They didn’t deserve it. But who deserved to be torn apart by an artillery shell with the words “Finish Them” on it?
Mr. Wright, chewing forcefully, peered over his glasses at me. “I hear Tristan’s in DC. Hope he’s not giving you a hard time.”
I found a neutral voice. “I really don’t see him much.”
“I’m glad he got away from that Shannon girl. Think moving was good for him.”
Jay said, “That was years ago. He has a new girlfriend now.”
Mr. Wright grinned at Jay. “I’m just happy you found one and kept one. You know, your mom and I got married at your age?”
Jay stabbed his mac and cheese with his fork. I knew he wanted to make a quip about them being divorced. His mom, long moved on, was on her fourth husband.
“I spoke to her the other day,” Mr. Wright said. “What’s this money thing?”
“I’m surprised she told you about that.”
“I know she can be all over the place. But she does love you. She’s struggling.”
“How much money do you give her?”
He grunted. “She’s not my mother.”
On TV, they were playing a clip from a celebratory rally in Pennsylvania. “A buffoon,” Mr. Wright muttered, squirting Dijon mustard into his baked beans.
Jay folded his outdoor clothes over his desk chair. “We don’t have to stay the night if you don’t want.”
“I don’t mind.” Swinging my legs onto the bed, I mindlessly opened the photo album on his nightstand. There were several pictures of him as a calm, squinty-eyed baby, then a hyperactive toddler.
I paused on a photo of Tristan and Jay as kids standing beneath the orange tree in Jay’s backyard. “I haven’t talked to Milan in weeks.” The confession came out unexpectedly, like I’d been pressing it down with my tongue.
Jay was splashing water on his face in the bathroom when he looked up. “What happened?”
“We had a fight.”
He patted his face with a towel and cut off the bathroom light. “What was it about?”
“I don’t even know. We were just mean to each other.”
“Tristan and I had a bad fight once.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, in college.” Jay leaned in the doorway. “A physical one.”
The image of them hurting each other was almost too painful to conjure. “About what?”
“It was a culmination of things. But my point is, it was really hard but we worked it out. Friendships can withstand a lot. So, don’t worry about Milan. I know you two. You’ll work it out.”
He touched my shoulder. I took his hand, kissed it, then continued flipping through the album. There was a picture of me, chubby-faced at nineteen, sitting on the sofa in Mr. Wright’s living room during my first Christmas in LA.
“I was gonna grab some wine,” Jay said. “Do you want any?”
I said sure. He left the room. I stumbled on a photo that was similar to the one of me on the sofa, but with a different constellation of people.
I must’ve been home that Christmas because Tristan was there (one of the times we’d missed each other), his arm around a girl.
She had the kind of pillow-soft lips, carved-away waist, coupe-shape breasts that made her seem unreal—not fake, just unattainably pretty. I understood then that he had a type.
Jay returned with two glasses of wine.
“Is this Shannon?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“She’s gorgeous. I feel like a bridge troll now.”
He didn’t laugh. “She wasn’t gorgeous on the inside.”
Closing the album, he set it aside. Mouth slightly stained with red wine, he murmured, “Want to fuck in my childhood bedroom?”
I laughed. Whenever he said “fuck,” it felt like an occasion—he had such a puritan’s mouth.
He downed his drink, a smile forming on his lips when he leaned in to kiss me, his tongue sharp and bitter with Malbec.
I polished off my wine then set it on the nightstand.
The bed creaked comically loud when I straddled him.
We paused to laugh, then I covered his laughing mouth with my hand.
When he said, “I like when you do that,” his voice vibrated against my palm.
I slowly removed my panties and stuffed them in his mouth. “How about this?”
He nodded, his teeth clamped around the cheap lace. I took him in my fist, guiding my hips down onto him. Rocking against me, he groaned. Gently, I held his throat, his pulse beating into my grip. For a moment, it was overwhelming, having his racing heartbeat in my hand.
“You come when I tell you to. Okay?”
His response was muffled. “Yes, okay.”
“But”—shoving my underwear deeper—“if these fall out, you don’t come at all.”
He whimpered, hips bucking beneath me. Hastily, he turned me onto my back and got on top, my panties now hanging down from his mouth.
I put my legs onto his shoulders. He stroked slow circles around my ankle bones with his thumbs.
From this angle, I could see all the dark beauty marks on his chest, creeping up his neck, in the lamplight.
Overcome with the desire to kiss him, I ripped my panties from his mouth and threw them on the floor. As we kissed, he mumbled, “Wait, so does this mean I don’t get to come?”
Laughing, I caught his hips between my thighs. “Come for me.”
Watching his face crumple with want, utterly vulnerable, I felt flooded with shame. It was like a lid had come off after being shut for a long time. His brown eyes reopened sluggishly like the sun rising over my face. Poor Jay, Milan had said on the fire escape, seething with disdain.
I turned onto my side, shielding my face with my elbow.
“Hey,” he said. When I didn’t answer, I felt his hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay? Hey, hey. It’s all right. Come here.”
He rolled beside me, lifting an arm. I shifted beneath it. His chest was hot on my cheek. In the beginning of our relationship, I used to joke that he needed to go to the hospital to make sure he wasn’t overheating.
“You’re not upset I tore the lace off your underwear, are you? I can buy you another pair.” When I looked up, he was smiling.
I touched his cheek. “I just miss you. That’s all.”
He kissed my eyelids. “You don’t have to miss me. I’m right here.”